Twenty-six candidates have secured a perfect 100 NTA score in the engineering entrance examination Joint Entrance Examination Main 2026, according to the National Testing Agency.

The figure is an increase from 24 candidates who achieved the same score in 2025.

More than 13 lakh candidates appeared for the January session of the exam, while over 10 lakh candidates took the April session. Over eight lakh candidates appeared in both sessions.

Among the top scorers, five candidates each are from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, followed by four from Rajasthan and three from Delhi. Maharashtra and Haryana have two candidates each, while one candidate each is from Chandigarh, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Odisha and Gujarat. All 26 candidates are male.

Officials said the NTA score is a normalised score and not equivalent to the percentage of marks obtained. It is calculated based on the relative performance of candidates across multiple shifts, with marks scaled between 100 and 0.

No candidate from the Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe categories featured among the 100 percentile scorers, continuing a trend observed in previous years.

A total of 2,50,182 candidates have qualified for Joint Entrance Examination Advanced this year. Of these, 96,873 are from the general category, 67,597 from Other Backward Classes, 37,522 from Scheduled Castes, 25,009 from the Economically Weaker Section and 18,790 from Scheduled Tribes.

The JEE-Main serves as the gateway to undergraduate engineering programmes at institutions including the National Institutes of Technology and the Indian Institutes of Information Technology, among other centrally funded institutions.

The examination is conducted twice a year in a computer-based format, with candidates allowed to appear in one or both sessions. The best score is considered for ranking.

Inputs from PTI

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